Ms. Bauer’s 5th Grade School Supply List (and Coping Mechanism) for 2021–2022

Dear Parents and Students,

It was wonderful to “meet” so many of you during this morning’s Zoom! In just a few days, we will begin our second consecutive school year in the midst of a pandemic. We will get through it together! During the last year and a half, we’ve all found strategies for handling the associated stress and uncertainty, and the mantra I’ve adopted is “Focus on the things you can control.”

Can I control the fact that our school district is only “recommending” masks for students and staff? No. Can I control our county’s pathetic 39% vaccination rate? Nope! Can I control my pandemic-induced insomnia? I’ve tried everything, and apparently not!

Hence, this year’s school supply list.

Sincerely,
Ms. Bauer

Scientific Calculator
Models T-A4276-9 or T-A4276-8 ONLY. For the love of God, please do NOT buy the T-A4276-10.

Pocket Folders: Please adhere to the following color guidelines:
1. Blue (Social Studies)
Acceptable shades: infinity pool, Wyoming sky, Paul Newman’s eyes
2. Green (Science)
Acceptable shades: nauseated-face emoji, dad cargo pants, envy (Do you know what I envy? Teachers in school districts with mask mandates!)
3. Yellow (ELA)
Acceptable shades: NYC taxi, murder hornet, pus
4. Red (Math)
Acceptable shades: Type B+ blood, Anne Shirley’s pigtails, Communist
5. Purple (Art)
Acceptable shades: mangosteen, the purple from the Bi flag, puce

Refillable Water Bottle
Yeti, Sigg, and good ol’ Nalgene ONLY. Hydro Flask is a bit too 2019 VSCO Girl. Yawn.

Box of 12 Colored Pencils
Preferably a box that one of the student’s parents impulsively purchased with a stress-relief mandala coloring book and only used once. (Incidentally, I’m happy to take any unwanted coloring books off your hands in order to decompress after school board meetings in which parents rant about critical race theory.)

4 Spiral Notebooks
I prefer that the horizontal and vertical rules printed on the sheets be two colors directly across from each other on the color wheel, for aesthetic reasons. (Please avoid the traditional red-and-blue combination, as it brings to mind a barber pole, and my ex was a barber. I don’t need THAT reminder in my life every weekday, thanks.)

2 Bottles of Hand Sanitizer
Acceptable scents: petrichor, schadenfreude, ennui. Unacceptable scents: lavender (I don’t want the kids falling asleep in class.)

3 Highlighters
Any colors (Go wild—you’ve earned it!)

72 No. 2 Pencils (latex-free)
These MUST be pre-sharpened. We’ve lost so much instruction time since March 2020 that we simply cannot waste precious minutes of the school day using the pencil sharpener. (Your kids will probably bring most of these home at the end of the year, unused.)

2 Three-Ring Binders
Acceptable designs: Trapper Keepers (all themes) and other throwbacks that allow me to extract a bit of joy from elder-millennial childhood nostalgia. Your child will get extra credit if you can locate and purchase the Lisa Frank Trapper Keeper I had in 1993 that depicted three rabbit ballerinas. Happy hunting!